


A Dance of Shadows

by Copperonthetongue



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Dad Ivar (Vikings), Fatherhood, Gen, Ivar is Done with Oleg's shit, Love, Monsters, Other, Parenthood, Possessive Ivar (Vikings), Regret, Vulnerable Ivar, do NOT fuck with Ivar's kid, musings in the dark, posession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22458934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperonthetongue/pseuds/Copperonthetongue
Summary: If Oleg wants to dance with devils, then Ivar will play him such a tune that the gods themselves will tremble to hear it.
Relationships: Ivar & Igor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 70





	A Dance of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> I have so much writing to do but this would NOT get out of my head. So here it is. Shut up, Ivar. I have dragons to write.

Ivar did not expect to love him. That is the thought that plagues him in the darkest part of the night when Oleg’s halls have gone still and silent and in the rare quiet moments of the day when his ever-churning mind deigns to allow him a brief moment of respite. Small islands of peace from the clawing, hungry ambition that drives him ever-forward to seek his destiny. 

To seek greatness. 

Ivar had not expected to love the boy—but he cannot deny that he does. From the depths of his soul Ivar loves Igor, and he does not know what to do. Just acknowledging it in the privacy of his own mind makes something inside of him squirm like grave-worms. His guts twisting in fear for both himself and the child. Ivar loves the boy, but the earliest lesson that he ever learned was that love was a weakness that he could not afford.

Yet he cannot avoid it.

It is fate. Ivar knows it. He feels the truth of it every time he looks down into Igor’s wide, innocent eyes. Eyes that look back up at him and shine with joy and admiration instead of contempt and revulsion. Ivar knows without question that he is lost. He’d known it from the first moment Igor had smiled at him and reached for his hand without hesitation or fear. The boy reached out—and Ivar’s weak and rebellious heart had answered by reaching back with greedy desperation. It had felt much like Ivar had always imagined dying would, and the thought has crossed his mind more than once that perhaps he is already dead and that this is Hel. 

It isn’t, but it would be kinder if it was. That is how Ivar knows that it is not Hel, and that he is not dead. The gods would never be so merciful, and so that means that the world around him is real, that Igor and the love that strangles Ivar every time he looks at the child is real as well. It brings him no joy, because what a man loves can be taken away.

Ivar has in fact taken great personal pleasure in twisting other men’s hearts against them for his own purposes. He’s savored the pain and fury in the eyes of his enemies as they watch him strip them of that which they treasure most and it has always sated him in a way that nothing else can. Ivar’s cock may not rise for a woman’s touch, or for a man’s—because he has tried that as well. Ivar is long past being disturbed by his own desires and desiring a man rather than a woman would be the least of his troubles. There is an ugly truth at the root of him that few know and that he will never share —save with those who will never have lips again to speak it with after their time together,

Ivar’s flesh will not rise for men or women, for sweet touches or passion—but suffering stirs him as powerfully as a woman’s teats would other men and when he kills, when he brings pain of the flesh or soul to others then and only then does his flesh answer as other men’s might because it is not lust that moves him. 

Only cruelty. For Ivar, the tears of other men’s suffering are sweeter by far than any mead he has ever drunk. No hard cock or wet cunt will ever move him as much as watching the light of hope in another person’s eyes die. It is his nature. His fate. Inescapable as the ocean tides and the chill of winter. 

He was born to be a monster was he not? Lust had caused Ragnar Lothbrok to take his wife to his bed when she warned him not to —and the cost of it was that lust as other men experienced it was beyond Ivar’s reach. The gods had a fine sense of humor, did they not? What a jest they must have had at Ivar’s conception.

A monster he has always been….but now Ivar finds himself becoming a man and it does not please him. Monsters can inspire dread and fear because they are more than human --or less, depending on who a man might ask. Monsters are unfathomable. Unpredictable. Indestructible. 

But men? 

Men can die. Men can be conquered and controlled. A

Anticipated. 

Ivar cards his fingers through Igor’s hair as the child sleeps, sprawled innocently across his chest like an overlarge kitten and he knows in his withered black soul that Igor has ruined him, utterly and irrevocably. Igor has made Ivar a man and that means that he is vulnerable now in a way that he has never been before. 

Ivar’s helpless love for Igor is a weapon in the hands of his enemies —and Ivar knows all too well that he has made many, many enemies. So many that he cannot remember all their names. What joy it would bring them to destroy that which Ivar treasures most! What pleasure to see his suffering.

Ivar grits his teeth against the thought and buries his face in the soft tangle of Igor’s hair and clutches the child tighter, making the boy shift restlessly in his sleep. Ivar gentles himself immediately, pressing another apologetic kiss to the child’s hair. He forces his fury to subside, shoving it down into the writhing pit at the back of his mind where his doubts live, the prison of his fears and his pain. He will not harm Igor. Not now. Not ever. 

Nor will anyone else.

The child is Ivar’s weakness now, Igor has become the vulnerable white of Ivar’s underbelly and the rabbit-soft skin at his throat and all Ivar can do now is try to shield the boy and by extension himself— as best he can from the danger that surrounds them and worst of all is that he must do so now as a man and not a monster. 

All for love. 

He looks down at the child in the dark, watches the shadows play on his pale skin and he knows that all it would take to free himself would be to kill the boy. Ivar tries to imagine strangling the life out of Igor’s little body as he had his sweet, treacherous Freydis but the very marrow of his bones recoils in horror at the idea of it and the terrible truth is that Ivar can’t even bring himself to resent the child for it. 

Ragnar had been right all those years ago. Happiness and love are nothing but a sweet, slow poison. Yet Ivar cannot help but crave them. He always has. No matter how much he wished that he didn’t. 

The world has always assumed that it is Ivar’s legs that are his great weakness, but Ivar himself has always known the truth. His greatest weakness has always been his heart. It is hungry and pitiful. It cries out for others like a man desperate for water in a desert and no matter how much Ivar has tried to harden it---it remains stubbornly soft and weak and he cannot always rule it. His heart does as it pleases and Ivar is at times helpless to resist its hunger.

Rage Ivar knows, hate and bitterness were his earliest companions. Cruelty too is as familiar to him as his own name, but love? Tenderness? What does Ivar know of such things? He is Ivar the Boneless, feared and dreaded, hated and reviled. The Gods did not fashion him to be loved. Only for suffering, both his own and that of others. He is the Gods curse on the world. A carrion-crow. A monster whose name is to be whispered of only in the dark with hushed voices. 

Yet, monsters cannot love, and Ivar can. He does, and as he hums softly to the sleeping boy in his arms and strokes his hair he is forced to accept the fact that Igor has slain the monster he was born to be without ever drawing so much a drop of blood.

Ivar is a man and even though he knows it may well be the death of him, he will meet his end as a true Viking should. With joy. With a song in his heart and a curse on his lips. As he watches the shadows shift at the edges of the room and listens to the hissing of the snakes that have haunted him since the day of his father’s murder Ivar’s smile is a bright sickle blade in the dark, and the pale blue of his eyes is cold and hateful. 

If Oleg wishes to dance with devils, then Ivar will play him such a tune that the gods themselves will tremble to hear and they will see who is favored in the end. 

Let the dance begin.


End file.
